Hard Drive Switch

[JEFFMAN]

I am using an old hard drive from a laptop in my current rig. I am planning to switch to an sdd. Can I copy my hard drives files to the ssd with a sata to usb cable or do I have to buy Windows 10 again?

[GoldenLag]

you dont have to buy Win 10 again. a key is bound to the mobo you are using and it should recognize it just fine. taking from experience and prehand knowlage while typing on a upgraded HP laptop. 

[Senzelian]

8 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

you dont have to buy Win 10 again. a key is bound to the mobo you are using and it should recognize it just fine. taking from experience and prehand knowlage while typing on a upgraded HP laptop. 

Windows keys are not bound to motherboards.

 

21 minutes ago, JEFFMAN said:

I am using an old hard drive from a laptop in my current rig. I am planning to switch to an sdd. Can I copy my hard drives files to the ssd with a sata to usb cable or do I have to buy Windows 10 again?

 

You can "copy", in this case it's called clone, the data from your old drive to your new one.

This will lead to a slight performance loss, compared to a new windows installation.

 

To do this all you need to do is to connect the new drive to your current PC and use a tool like "AOMEI Backupper" to clone the drive.

 

If the new drive is of the same size or larger than the old one, enable "sector to sector" clone.

If not, disable it within the application you are using for cloning.

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Windows keys are not bound to motherboards

OEM key are since after a mobo swap OEM keys gets rejected(from what ive heard) , but i guess im misstaken there. though i still didnt have to get another key after swap. i have the HP probook 6470b. moved from 500 GB HDD to 120 GB SSD

[Senzelian]

Just now, GoldenLag said:

OEM key are since after a mobo swap OEM keys gets rejected(from what ive heard) , but i guess im misstaken there. though i still didnt have to get another key after swap. i have the HP probook 6470b. moved from 500 GB HDD to 120 GB SSD

Did you clone your drive or are you logged into a Microsoft account?

[GoldenLag]

3 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Did you clone your drive or are you logged into a Microsoft account?

logged into a microsoft account, so i guess that did it. didnt clone my drive. you can get scripts that apperantly fetch the win 10 key, but i found that was sketchy at best

[Senzelian]

1 minute ago, GoldenLag said:

logged into a microsoft account, so i guess that did it. didnt clone my drive. you can get scripts that apperantly fetch the win 10 key, but i found that was sketchy at best

Well, yeah in that case the microsoft account took care of it.

 

I found that by simply cloning, especially sector to sector clones, I wouldn't need to activate windows.

That leads me to believe, that they key is not attached to any certain hardware.

[JEFFMAN]

1 hour ago, Senzelian said:

Windows keys are not bound to motherboards.

 

 

You can "copy", in this case it's called clone, the data from your old drive to your new one.

This will lead to a slight performance loss, compared to a new windows installation.

 

To do this all you need to do is to connect the new drive to your current PC and use a tool like "AOMEI Backupper" to clone the drive.

 

If the new drive is of the same size or larger than the old one, enable "sector to sector" clone.

If not, disable it within the application you are using for cloning.

Cant I get a SATA to usb cable and copy paste the C drive?

[Senzelian]

3 hours ago, JEFFMAN said:

Cant I get a SATA to usb cable and copy paste the C drive?

No, that won't work.

[BeefyMeats]

You need to clone the drive while both are "offline".

 

If you dont have another machine than, use a live boot utlity like cloneZilla, (it boots via usb thumb drive). Than you can connect your new drive into sata and the old via an adaptor of some sort. Than just clone them (dont get the source and destination wrong or else you will clone the blank disk to the full one  )